Heart Hardening's Effect on Society Today's Three-minute Bible Study Print, Study and Apply Title: Heart Hardening's Effect on Society-------------------------- Date: 6/25/2001 Keywords: "hardness of heart" Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation. Passage: Lamentations 3:62-4:3* 62. [Jeremiah, the prophet writes:] "The lips of my assailants and their whispering are against me all day long. 63. Look on their sitting and their rising; I am their mocking song. 64. You will recompense them, O Lord, according to the work of their hands. 65. You will give them hardness of heart, your curse will be on them. 66. You will pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord! 1. How dark the gold has become, how the pure gold has changed! The sacred stones are poured out at the corner of every street. 2. The precious sons of Zion, weighed against fine gold, how they are regarded as earthen jars, the work of a potter's hands! 3. Even Jackals offer the breast, they nurse their young; but the daughter of my people has become cruel like ostriches in the wilderness." Questions 1. Have you noticed that no matter how "prosperous" a society appears, there seems to be a destructive undercurrent? What is your explanation for this?   2. In the passage above, Jeremiah is describing a process of heart-hardening. How is pornography a part of this problem?   Practical help Jeremiah the prophet came at a time in history when God's people, the children of Israel, had abandoned their love and worship of Yahweh, the one true God, in order to pursue more sensual pleasures. Like John the Baptist who would come later, Jeremiah was a voice crying in the wilderness — which means he was basically ignored. Those who opposed him took his words and turned them into "mocking songs." Basically, he was so far out of mainstream thought that his words didn't even seem to merit a reasoned rebuttal. But Jeremiah didn't stop talking. He states his belief that God's justice would prevail in the end (verse 64). We can have this same assurance that sin and evil will not prosper forever. Hardness of heart comes with the continual rejection of God's call on our lives. To not hear His voice is a real curse, but it is one we actually choose for ourselves. If you are trying to understand God and His plan for your life while at the same time dabbling in porn, you are no doubt a frustrated person. How can you expect to hear and understand God in Scripture and prayer when you are pursuing sexual gratification through pornography? The gold turning dark and loosing its purity is an image of what happened to the pure worship of God when people pursued their own greed and sexual lusts. When God is removed from the picture, human life becomes cheap (like broken jars) in everybody's eyes. But it gets worse. Societies can actually reach a point when the gentlest among them — the mothers of young — become worse than jackals. Babies in a society, as the most helpless among us, rely primarily on the love of their mothers, but what happens when the hearts of these mothers turn to stone and they walk away from their young (which is what ostriches do)? Pornography often begins as a secret sin, but it will not stay there. Eventually, when sin becomes the norm, righteous living becomes the material for mocking songs. At that point our children are in great danger because even their own mothers will not protect them. May God do a work in your heart today and help you stand against a power that seeks to destroy us all. eXXit homepage Index of three-minute studies Copyright 2001 by eXXit *"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission."